Logo DicoPolHiS
DicoPolHiS

Political Dictionary of the History of Health

New

    • Subtle energies

      "Subtle energies" is a key term in today’s alternative medicine. It plays a central role in the area of energy healing, which includes therapies such as acupuncture, Reiki, Pranic Healing, and Therapeutic Touch.

      Read more

    • Anti-drug Campaigns

      The history of anti-drug campaigns in Canada brings out the equal parts played by international politics and public health concerns.

      Read more

    • Dream

      Scientific dream theories – as well as traditional oneirocritical discourses – have long kept dreaming outside the historical field.

      Read more

    • Hookworm

      The hookworm causes a parasitic infection the history of which helps show how the Rockefeller Foundation impacted on the United States federal healthcare provisions.

      Read more

    • Child psychoanalysis

      Ever since Freud, psychoanalysis has taken an interest in the psychic life of Children. First considered a minor practice, psychoanalysis with children reached its full dimension in the 1970s.

      Read more

    • DSM

      The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a nosological classification that has played - and continues to play - a key role in structuring psychiatric care and research.

      Read more

    • Teleconsultations in mental health

      The health crisis linked to the Covid-19 epidemic has given a new impetus to the development of mental health care provision via teleconsultations.

      Read more

    • Encephalitis

      The European nationalisms have hindered the research on the most mysterious disease of the 20th century.

      Read more

    • Syringe

      The appearance of new syringe models in the 1850s questions the conditions of the development of medical techniques.

      Read more

    • Dreamcatcher

      There are policies of the dream, as illustrated by the different ways of apprehending the dreams in the Amerindian populations.

      Read more

    • Antialcoholism

      Over two centuries, medical, political and social circles around the world have been debating the stakes of the fight against alcoholism.

      Read more

    • Psychosis of current events

      During the «Great Depression» of the 1930s, psychiatric professionals diagnosed a new disease: the «psychosis of current events».

      Read more

    • Match workers

      As from the 1830s, match workers were facing numerous work-related hazards.

      Read more

    • Placenta

      The placenta and its singularities illustrate the advent of a new body policy.

      Read more

    • Political excitement

      The American psychiatric classification was once a tool at the service of white political power to the detriment of the emancipation of African-Americans.

      Read more

    • LSD

      LSD was, for a while in the 50s, a promising medication before becoming controversial.

      Read more

    • Lyme

      Patients and physicians hold conflicting political and scientific views on the existence of an emerging disease caused by tick bites.

      Read more

    • Body snatching

      Human dissections have been an essential part of medicine since the fourth century B.C. Contrary to widely held belief, the Church did not prohibit them in the Middle Ages.

      Read more

    • Speculum

      Gynaecological abuse has its history. A lookback on the growth in speculum use.

      Read more

    • Quiet Revolution

      In 1961, the publication of an ex-internee’s memoir instigated a mental health policy reform in the State of Quebec.

      Read more

    • Bed

      The bed is not a simple object structuring the hospital space. It is also a therapeutic instrument and an indicator for public authorities to guide hospital policy.

      Read more

    • Livorno 1804

      In 1804, the outbreak of a suspicious disease in Livorno led to strong tensions between the Italian states.

      Read more

    • Phage therapy

      Eclipsed by the rise of antibiotics after the Second World War, can bacteria-eating viruses discovered at the beginning of the 20th century be therapeutic tools while resistance to antibiotic therapy emerges?  

      Read more

    • Dr Quinn

      Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman can be considered as a feminist series as it highlights women's access to scientific and medical professions

      Read more

    • Menopause

      The history of “menopause” as a medical category revolves around gender relationships.

      Read more

    • Epilepsy

      How does the history of epilepsy explain the negative image that this disease still sometimes suffers from?

      Read more

    • Female delirium

      The emerging psychiatry has locked women in contemporary prejudices.

      Read more

    • Hollywood smile

      The Hollywood smile, characterized by white, straight teeth, is a complex phenomenon involving social, cultural, scientific and technological changes in the early 20th century. It emerged with the development of film, advertising, orthodontics and cosmetic dentistry.

      Read more

    • Anorexia

      The medical supervision of anorexia responded to political and scientific stakes in order to normalize puberty. 

      Read more

    • Nostalgia

      In the 19th century, nostalgia became a mortal illness that endangered French military and colonial might.

      Read more

    • Naturism

      Naturism strives for a natural public health.

      Read more

    • The Corset

      Devised to control the female body, the corset has had, between the 18th and the 20th century, many detractors.

      Read more

    • Yoga

      Can an Eastern spiritual practice become a Western health practice without betraying itself?

      Read more

    • Breast feeding

      The naturalness of breast feeding has been subordinated to a political idea of the Nation asserted in an explicit hierarchisation of class and race.

      Read more

    • Zombies

      In Haïti, some individuals come back to life whereas they had been declared dead then inhumed.

      Read more

    • Puerperal insanity

      The topicality of cases of infanticide invites us to question the historical origin of the madness of motherhood.

      Read more

    • Sugar

      The relationship to sugar in our society is sustainably anchored on a difference between genders.

      Read more

    • The Stomach

      Knowledge of the interconnection of the gut and psyche has a longer history than scientists often admit.

      Read more

    • D’Arsonval chronometer

      Time-measurement devices in clinical and experimental settings have historically tended to pathologize mental “slowness” and normalize “speed” as a signifier of mental health.

      Read more

    • Christine Jorgensen

      “Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty” : in 1953, Christine Jorgensen became the first transsexual in the media.

      Read more

    • Vegetarianism

      Around 1900, a vegetarian movement was organized in France to resolve the social question.

      Read more

    • Near Death Experience

      In the mid-1970s, the near-death experience emerged as a new spiritual manifestation within medicine, at the heart of a policy of survivors and their trauma.

      Read more

    • Barcelona 1821

      The 1821 yellow fever outbreak in Barcelona made clear the political dimensions of public health legislation.

      Read more

    • Lesbianism

      Lesbianism is considered in the 17th and nineteenth19th centuries, both as a physical and behavioural pathology. 

      Read more

    • Telemedicine and Covid-19

      Does the Covid-19 health crisis mark the advent of telemedicine in our societies?

      Read more

    • Asperger

      The naming of this syndrome in 1981 is loaded with potent political and historical implications.

      Read more

    • "Gueules cassées"

      The Gueules cassées, in other words facially disfigured soldiers, are recognized as war wounded people with difficulty, but they represent a turning point in surgery.

      Read more

    • The suitcases of Willard State Hospital (New-York)

      Suitcases as symbols of the struggle for dignity and civil rights of people with mental illnesses

      Read more

    • Psychedelic

      The term psychedelic was coined to refer to psychotic substances explored for use in psychiatry, but which remain under strict control

      Read more

    • Rare diseases

      The category of “rare diseases” was born of the interactions between authorities, patients and the pharmaceutical industry following a consolidation of US pharmaceutical legislation.

      Read more

    • Lypemania

      The re-naming of an illness is as much a political act as a scientific one, as shown by the case of lypemania

      Read more

    • Patient associations

      As early as the years 1930-50, tuberculosis patient associations became significant political actors.

      Read more

    • Tobacco control

      Tobacco control, for all that it serves unquestionable health purposes, remains steeped in political issues

      Read more

    • Truth serum



      The truth serum is not just a fantasy, the stuff of science-fiction, it is also a political and medical instrument.Screenshot from Franju, La Tête contre les murs. The truth serum is not just a fantasy...

      Read more

    • Caster Semenya

      The case of Caster Semenya politicises through sport the intersex condition.

      Read more

    • Officiers de santé

      Should the new career of assistant medical be understood as a return to the Officiers de Santé status ?

      Read more

    • Montreal 1989

      In July 1989, a handful of activists turned HIV-AIDS into a political issue.

      Read more

    • Social paediatrics



      Social paediatrics aim to think of child health holistically, within its environment and to act socially. Social paediatrics aim to think of child health holistically, within its environment and to act...

      Read more

    • The Blind

      The Great War marked a second turning point in the history of social policies towards the blind.

      Read more

    • Obesity

      Over the course of the 20th century, obesity came to be seen as a public health issue.

      Read more

    • Criminal abortion

      In 1852 the criminalisation of abortion is reaffirmed after the Academy of Medicine arrived at a resolution regarding therapeutic abortion.

      Read more

    • Radicalisation and psychiatry

      The lumping together of mental illness and radicalisation leads to negating the latter’s implication in individual and collective history

      Read more

    • Aerobics

      The Gym Tonic aerobics programme heralded the advent of a new politics of the female body

      Read more

    • Neurodiversity

      The notion of neurodiversity appeared at the end of the 90s in an effort to de-pathologize mental illness and combat discrimination.

      Read more

    • Tattoos

      A body enhancing aesthetic practice, tattooing pertained, in the 19th century, to the world of crime and social deviance.

      Read more

    • Mecca

      In 1865 cholera spread from Mecca to the rest of the world, redirecting just-born international health policy’s priorities on Muslim pilgrimage flows.

      Read more

    • Emergency medicine

      The 20th century oversaw the development of emergency medicine as a new public health norm.

      Read more

    • Caesarian section

      In 19th century Belgium, post-mortem caesarean section turned into a politicized debate.

      Read more

    • Excess mortality in psychiatric hospitals

      Did excess mortality among the Great War insane result from a political choice?

      Read more

    • Drapetomania

      Drapotemania exemplifies the existence of psychiatric diagnoses rooted in the political stigmatisation of a social group.

      Read more

    • Clitoris

      Almost entirely overlooked throughout the 20th century, neglected by contemporary medical manuals, the clitoris has gradually returned centre stage thanks to Western feminism.

      Read more

    • Intelligence test

      From the outset, the measurement of intelligence was as much a scientific as an eminently political endeavour.

      Read more

    • Hymen

      By asserting the hymen, a ubiquitous trait of female anatomy, 19th physicians reinforced the taboos affecting women's sexuality.

      Read more

    • Telemedicine

      The Covid-19 pandemic finds us revisiting an ancient practice: telemedicine.

      Read more

DicoPolHiS

DicoPolHiS (standing for dictionnaire politique de l’histoire de la santé, political dictionary of the history of health) is a French initiative which aims to gather the communities of historians, history students and actors of the healthcare system.

 

This dictionary is both historical and political. Its objective is to examine the social stakes of diagnosis and therapeutic practices since the 18th century to the present. Its historical approach permits to understand the way the social and political notions such as the construction of illnesses, care practices or the human body were defined through history. This dictionary studies concepts such as the relation between the caregiver and the patient, the intervention of citizens in the field of health, the social and political stakes of diagnosis and therapeutic practices.

 

These standardized notes follow academic rules and are written by academics and advanced history students and a new note is published every week.DicoPolHiS ambitions to become an open reference tool for academic production and to widen and internationalize. This project is led by Hervé Guillemain, historian and professor at Mans University, supported by the research laboratory for history, TEMOS CNRS 9016.

 

If you are interested in DicoPolHiS, you can follow us on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and visit our website: http://dicopolhis.univ-lemans.fr

 

The best way to help us grow is by sharing the initiative to your historian or health networks. If you are motivated to take part in the project by writing notes for the dictionary, please contact us at dicopolhis@univ-lemans.fr. It might also be for you an opportunity to promote your work on the French and international scenes.